THE LA RAZA CRIME TIDAL WAVE - “These figures do not attempt to allege that foreign
nationals in the country illegally commit more
crimes than other groups,” the report states. “It
simply identifies thousands of crimes that should
not have occurred and thousands of victims that
should not have been victimized because the
perpetrator should not be here.”
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON

Friday, December 21, 2018

The GOP said the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" would reduce deficits and supercharge the economy (and stocks and wages). The White House says things are working as planned, but one year on--the numbers mostly suggest otherwise.

THE REALITY OF THE SWAMP KEEPER'S DISMAL TRUMPERNOMICSRepublicans said the bill would pay for itself (contra every independent forecaster) initially pegging the 10-year cost at $1.5 trillion, but later raised to $1.9 trillion. Despite bogus claims from the administration that the deficit was "coming down rapidly," it's on track to rise from $666 billion in 2017 to $970 billion this year. That puts it at about 4.6 percent of gross domestic product, virtually unprecedented in such strong economic conditions. Usually, when the economy is doing well -- and we're not in a major war -- tax revenue is strong, spending on programs such as food stamps and unemployment falls, and the budget gap narrows. In fact, the last time the unemployment rate hovered around 4 percent, we had a surplus.

GDP growth is up this year -- to about 3 percent -- after averaging 2.2 percent over the previous five years. That's largely due, though, to the fact that the tax cuts (alongside spending hikes) provided an enormous fiscal stimulus. Every independent outside forecast suggests that the impact of that stimulus will fade next year with the Federal Reserve downgraded its growth estimate for 2019 to 2.3 percent and 1.9 percent by 2020 which means economic slow down, but let's not call it a recession, yet.

Business investment spiked immediately after the tax cuts, but slowed last quarter. The stock market boomed initially, but most recently, stocks have fallen, thanks to other factors, such as the U.S.-China trade war. With lower tax rates, pretty much by definition stock prices should rise. Firms used their tax windfall for share buybacks, which further buoy stocks, and a record $1.1 trillion of buybacks has been announced this year, but the tax cuts were suppose to free up more money for raises (not buybacks), and in the long term it's hoped firms investment in new capital equipment will boost worker productivity, but Inflation-adjusted wages have continued trudging upward and with the most American losing tax cuts in 2019 we are seeing the Obama bump economy replaced by the trump fake-economy. Trump and the GOP created a fake economic boom on our collective credit card: The equivalent of maxing out your credit cards and saying look how good I'm doing right now.

Swamp Keeper Trump
prepares for the inevitable move to impeach him and ask for asylum in Scotland.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in an interview Thursday
that President Donald Trump has succeeded as a conversation starter but has
failed to keep his most important campaign promises.

“His chief promises were
that he would build the wall, de-fund Planned Parenthood, and repeal Obamacare,
and he hasn’t done any of those things,” Carlson told Urs Gehriger of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.

"I doubt that
Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early
1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the
then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal
bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of
Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his
landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001."

“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs
throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical
foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian
Gulf.” AMIL IMANI

I recommend that Ignatius read Raymond
Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword
and Scimitar, which
contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle
East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his
father was to strangle all his brothers. Yes, it's
awful. But it has been happening for a very long
time. And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged
we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests”
Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely
from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses,
and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P.
Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores, and the White House
wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering
corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate
America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s OBAMANOMICS TO
SERVE THE RICH AND GLOBALIST BILLIONAIRES.

“Underwood is a Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars
in penalties. She wants Trump and his eldest children barred from running other
charities.”

THE
ECONOMIST:

America’s
drift to war and economic collapse

"The
United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid
over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit,
thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we
hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!" PAT
BUCHANAN

"Trump's
alleged comment is maddening and disheartening,
but at least he's being straightforward about his indefensible
and self-serving neglect. I'll leave you with this
reminder of the scope of the problem, not
that anyone in power is going to do a damn thing about it."

"The tax overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall for the
super-rich, on top

of the fact that virtually all income gains during the period of
the supposed

recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1
percent income

bracket."

Republicans Should Fight into January for the WallBy Deroy Murdock

National Review Online, December 21, 2018

Bafflingly, President Trump has not used all his tools to promote the border wall. He has yet to address the nation from the Oval Office on this or any other topic. He should cancel his Mar-a-Lago vacation and, at the earliest opportunity, tell his fellow Americans in prime time the importance of securing this country’s colander-like border. He should restate that limiting immigration to those with passports and visas is fundamental to national sovereignty. Beyond the 396,579 illegal aliens apprehended at the border in fiscal year 2018 — atop those who successfully broke into America — the southern frontier is a hotbed of human smuggling, a conveyor belt for illegal narcotics (including opioids), and a veritable moving sidewalk for members of MS-13 and other vicious, bloodthirsty gangs.

Even more amazing, Trump rarely discusses the potentially lethal threat of special-interest aliens from such terror states as Iran, Sudan, and Syria. U.S. officials nabbed, respectively, 111, 86, and 44 illegal aliens from those dangerous countries in 2016. The Center for Immigration Studies’ Todd Bensman last week interviewed four Iranians wandering north through Costa Rica — to America. A wall would reduce this national-security risk. President Trump should explain this clear and present danger. This unassailable argument for the wall cannot be dismissed as “anti-Hispanic racism.” Inexplicably, the president barely mentions this.. . .. . .https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/republican-border-wall-fight-last-chance-for-security/

Fed attempt at calming markets fails

Wall Street plunge continues

By Nick Beams 22 December 2018

Wall Street had another wild day yesterday with the Dow ending down by 415 points, after rising by almost 400 points in the opening hours of trading. The S&P 500 index fell by 2 percent and the NASDAQ was down by 2.99 percent, capping the worst week for Wall Street since October 2008.

The Dow lost 1655 points for the week, a decline of 6.8 percent, its worst percentage drop since the onset of the financial crisis a decade ago, the NASDAQ lost 8.3 percent for the week and is now 22 percent below its high last August and the S&P fell by 7 percent and is now down 17.8 percent from its high.

Both the S&P and the Dow are on track for their worst December performance since December 1931, amid the Great Depression.

Bloomberg published an article noting that currently 38 percent of stocks are trading at 52-week lows. Since 1984, there have only been eight days when a larger proportion of stocks traded at those levels. Two of them took place during the October 1987 crash, when the Dow fell 23 percent in a day, with the rest occurring in October and November 2008.

The brief rally was set off by an interview with New York Federal Reserve president John Williams with the business channel CNBC in which he said the Fed was going into 2019 with eyes “wide open” and was willing to reassess its outlook for the economy and by implication its monetary policy.

He had clearly been given a brief to calm the markets after their adverse reaction to Wednesday’s decision to lift interest rates by 0.25 percent and indicate that the Fed was taking note. He defended the rate rise, based on the assessment that the economy would continue to grow next year, but said the Fed was paying close attention to financial markets.

The effect of his reassurances lasted about two hours before the markets started to plunge again.

The rate hike was not the only aspect of monetary policy which impacted the markets. There was an adverse reaction to the statement by Fed chair Jerome Powell during his Wednesday press conference that the wind back of its asset holdings, acquired under the program of quantitative easing (QE) when the Fed entered the market to buy bonds, was on “auto pilot” and would continue at the rate of $50 billion per month.

Under QE, the Fed expanded its assets from around $800 billion to more than $4 trillion. The effect of this measure was to push up the price of bonds and lower interest rates—the two have an inverse relationship. The downward pressure on interest rates under QE fuelled the continuation of the very financial speculation which had led to the crisis of 2008, giving rise to the longest bull-run on the stock market in history.

While the Fed began to reverse its QE policy 15 months ago, similar operations were continued by other central banks. But now they are moving in the same direction, tightening credit conditions in global financial markets.

One of the fears on Wall Street is that its dirty secret is being exposed and that just as the wave of cheap money under QE provided a major boost for financial operations its reversal, or quantitative tightening (QT), is going to bring an unravelling. This is because growth in the global economy remains well below the level attained before the financial crisis and it cannot withstand a return to what were once considered to be “normal” financial conditions.

There are increasing signs that the global economy is slowing significantly and could be headed for a recession. The year began with claims that in 2017 the world economy had enjoyed “synchronised” growth and had experienced its best year since the financial crisis of 2008.

But prospects for a continuation of that trend proved to be short lived and the year has ended with significant slowdowns in both the German and Japanese economies. Another indicator of global trends is the fall in commodity prices, with oil leading the way, having fallen by 30 percent in the last two months.

For most of this year, the US has been something of an outlier from this trend, with corporations receiving a major boost as a result of the corporate tax cuts enacted by the Trump administration at the end of last year. Trump claimed this would be a boost to investment and jobs. But that claim has already been given the lie by the major job cuts and closures announced by General Motors and the fact that the increase in corporate profits has largely been used to finance share buybacks and boost dividends.

It is significant that what the Financial Times described as a “tsunami of money”—estimated to reach $1 trillion for the year—has failed to prevent what could be the worst year for stock markets since the global financial crisis.

Besides financial conditions, trade-war tensions are another key factor in the sell-off. This was illustrated yesterday when an interview with Trump’s White House trade adviser Peter Navarro led to a further market fall late in the day.

Navarro told the Japanese news agency, Nikkei, that it would be “very difficult” for the US and China to reach an agreement within the 90-day deadline agreed to by Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping at their meeting in Buenos Aires on December 1.

Navarro, one of the main anti-China hawks within the administration, said there could be “no half-measures” and China had to address all US demands, including claims of forced technology transfers, cyber spying on business networks, state-directed investments and tariff and non-tariff barriers. In short, there had to be a total capitulation by China before any deal could be reached.

Underlining the central issues motivating the most hawkish anti-China forces within the administration and the military and intelligence apparatuses that have stepped up their offensive against China in recent weeks, he said: “China is basically trying to steal the future of Japan, the US and Europe, by going after our technology.”

He called the “Made in China 2025” program—the centre of its plan for industrial and technological development—a “label for a Chinese strategy to achieve dominance in the industries of the future.”

While China has dropped references to the plan in recent times, “no one in Japan or the United States really believes that they have abandoned the goals of China 2025.”

Another significant aspect of the present market plunge is the way in which economic processes are intersecting with growing political turmoil both internationally—the Brexit crisis in the UK being one of the most prominent examples—and the ongoing and deepening conflicts within the US political establishment.

Both the impending government shutdown in the US, over Trump’s insistence that funding for a wall between the US and Mexico must be included in any settlement of the standoff with Congress, and the political firestorm set off by Trump’s announcement of a withdrawal of US troops from Syria and the consequent resignation of Defence Secretary James Mattis have played into the market plunge.

In the longer term, the market and political turmoil is the outcome of the breakdown of the global capitalist order which erupted in the form of the financial crisis of 2008. In the decade since, none of the contradictions that produced it have been resolved, they have simply metastasized to return in even more malignant forms.

Market meltdown: Fears of a slowing economy worsen ahead of market close as the Dow drops another 600 points, Nasdaq barely avoids bear market and oil prices plummet to lowest point in 16 months

Stocks are on track for their worst month in a decade this December

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped as much as 600 points on Thursday before rebounding slightly to a loss of just 460 point at 3pm Eastern

The S&P 500 index fell 2.3 percent but is on track to close at 1.12 percent down

The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite is now down 20 percent from August

The market swoon is coming even as the US economy is on track to expand this year at the fastest pace in more than a decade

Stock prices are tumbling again Thursday as a series of big December plunges has stocks on track for their worst month in a decade.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped as much as 600 points on Thursday before rebounding slightly to a loss of just 460 point at 3pm Eastern, bringing its losses since Friday to more than 1,800 points.

The benchmark S&P 500 index fell 2.3 percent but is on track to close at 1.12 percent down. It has slumped 11 percent this month and is now 15 percent below the peak it reached in late September. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite did even worse, and is now down 20 percent from its record high in August.

After steady gains through the spring and summer, stocks have nosedived in the fall as investors worry that global economic growth is cooling off and that the US could slip into a recession in the next few years. Oil prices fell sharply again.

The market swoon is coming even as the US economy is on track to expand this year at the fastest pace in more than a decade. Markets tend to move, however, on what investors anticipate will happen well into the future, so it's not uncommon for stocks to sink even when the economy is humming along.

Right now, markets are concerned about the potential for a slowing economy and two threats that could make the situation worse: the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China, which has lasted most of this year and shows few signs of easing, and rising interest rates, which act as a brake on economic growth by making it more expensive for businesses and individuals to borrow money.

Ted Cruz Is Right: Make El Chapo Pay for the Wall

It would be poetic justice, is deliciously named, and wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a dime. It doesn’t make Mexico pay for the wall, just one particular Mexican who has done great injury to the people of the United States and who is responsible for a major part of drugs flooding into the United States.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a bill calling for the use of $14 billion seized from cartel drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to be used to pay for the President’s border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

“Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border,” Senator Cruz stated, according to a statement obtained by Breitbart Texas from the senator’s office…

The Texas senator said that leveraging criminally forfeited assets from El Chapo and other Mexican cartel members and drug dealers can “offset the wall’s cost and make meaningful progress toward achieving President Trump’s stated border security objectives.”

Some might dismiss this idea as a campaign gimmick intended to help Cruz in his tough 2018 reelection bid, but it is an idea whose time has definitely come. El Chapo is responsible for many crimes against his people and ours, including the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry using a weapon supplied by presidential wannabe and former Obama AG Eric Holder:

We assume Holder reads the morning paper and has heard of the 40 assault weapons illegally purchased under the Phoenix ATF's Fast and Furious operation that somehow wound up in the home of Sinaloa cartel enforcer Torres "the Jaguar" Marrufo. If he has, we suspect his reaction might have been akin to that of another famous sitcom character, Steve Urkel: "Did I do that?"

This is no sitcom, but rather a major tragedy -- and a major crime. Marrufo is the enforcer for Sinaloa Cartel chieftain Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed at the hands of an illegal immigrant working for the Sinaloa cartel just 10 miles from the Mexico border near Nogales, Ariz.

Among the weapons Obama and Holder supplied El Chapo with under Fast and Furious was a .50-caliber rifle liberals like to rail against: As Fox News reportedabout Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo”:

A .50-caliber rifle found at Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman’s hideout in Mexico was funneled through the gun-smuggling investigation known as Fast and Furious, sources confirmed Tuesday to Fox News.

A .50-caliber is a massive rifle that can stop a car or, as it was intended, take down a helicopter…

Federal law enforcement sources told Fox News that ‘El Chapo’ would put his guardsmen on hilltops to be on guard for Mexican police helicopters that would fly through valleys conducting raids. The sole purpose of the guardsmen would be to shoot down those helicopters, sources said.

Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner has proposed similar legislation in the House to spend money seized from the drug cartels to fund a border wall:

"This is a way to fulfill the president's desire to have Mexico pay for the wall," Sensenbrenner, a member of the Judiciary Committee, told the Washington Examiner. "Having the money seized from Mexican drug cartels would mean that the bad Mexicans would end up paying for the wall, and the bad Mexicans have been terrorizing the good Mexicans with crime and kidnappings and murders within Mexico itself."…

"The [Drug Enforcement Agency] has estimated that the gross receipts of the Mexican drug trade or somewhere between $19-$29 billion a year," he said. "We don't have to be 100 percent efficient to get the the money we need to completely pay for the wall relatively quickly."

Contrary to claims by Sen. Chuck Schumer that border walls are ineffective, the empirical evidence shows that border walls work and no place is better proof than the Yuma sector in Arizona:

For years, Yuma sector was besieged by chaos as a nearly unending flood of migrants and drugs poured across our border. Even as agents were arresting on average 800 illegal aliens a day, we were still unable to stop the thousands of trucks filled with drugs and humans that quickly crossed a vanishing point and dispersed into communities all across the country…

The bipartisan Secure Fence Act of 2006 -- supported by then-Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and others -- mandated the construction of hundreds of additional miles of secure fencing and infrastructure investments. Yuma sector was one of the first areas to receive infrastructure investments.

We built new infrastructure along the border east and west of theSan Luis Arizona Port of Entry in 2006. The existing fence was quickly lengthened, and we added second and third layers to that fencing in urban areas. Lighting, roads and increased surveillance were added to aid agents patrolling the border.

Although there is still work to do, the border in Yuma sector today is more secure because of this investment.

Trump was initially able to begin immediate construction of the border wall and open up bidding for contracts thanks to the 2006 measure signed into law by President George W. Bush and supported by Democrats including then-senators Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton:

Democrats are already grumbling about Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, though Barack Obama and other leaders in their party voted not so long ago for George W. Bush’s proposal to build a major wall on the border with Mexico.

Bush signed the proposal into law in 2006, after it was passed by huge bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate. The law ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to construct about 700 miles of fencing along the southern border, and authorized the addition of lights and cameras and sensors to enhance security. The law explicitly required the wall to be constructed of “at least two layers of reinforced fencing.”

Two-thirds of the Republican-led House approved the bill, including 64 Democrats, and 80 of 100 senators approved the bill in the Senate.

The Secure Fence Act of 2006 required the construction of 700 miles of new border fence along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. “The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide for at least two layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras and sensors…” the act said.

It was to be modeled on the success of the border barriers in the San Diego sector of the U.S. border. The operative word was “secure”. Instead of this two-layer secure fence what has been built consists of flimsy pedestrian fencing or vehicle fencing consisting of posts people can slither through.

The two-tier fence in San Diego runs 14 miles along the border with Tijuana, Mexico. The first layer is a high steel fence, with an inner high anti-climb fence with a no-man’s land in between. It has been amazingly effective. According to a 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, illegal alien apprehensions in the San Diego sector dropped from 202,000 in 1992 to 9,000 in 2004.

Cameras and sensors played a part, but the emphasis was on physical barriers and roads that were patrolled by real live border guards, not by robots. Then in 2006, the Democrats took back Congress and, in 2008, the White House.

They saw in unrestricted immigration a means to fundamentally transform the demographics of America and its political landscape. A wave of what some called “undocumented Democrats” would be allowed to flood across the borderas ICE was told not to enforce the law. Former border state governor Janet Napolitano, who became DHS secretary, reportedly once said: “You show me a 50-foot fence and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border,” The rest, as they say, is history.

But the consequences of unrestricted illegal immigration soon became too big to ignore and with a candidate willing to touch the new third rail of American politics, border security, a political movement chanting “build the wall” swept Trump into power.

If President Trump compromises the wall into nonexistence, he risks his campaign mantra “build the wall” becoming his “read my lips” ticket to a single term. In Yuma and San Diego fences and walls worked. So will Trump’s wall. Build the wall and make the likes of El Chapo pay for it.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared inInvestor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the ChicagoSun-Times among other publications.

Two former Mexican presidents publicly denied
taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. The statements came after the legal
defense for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera made contrary claims this week.

The drug lord is facing several
money laundering and drug trafficking charges at a federal trial in New York.
In his opening statement, defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman spoke of bribes
“including the very top, the current president of Mexico and the former.”

Soon after the statements became
public, Mexico’s government issued a statement denying the allegations. Eduardo
Sanchez, the spokesman for current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said
the statements were false and “defamatory.”

Under Guzman’s leadership, the Sinaloa
Cartel became the largest drug trafficking organization in the world with
influence in every major U.S. city.

The allegations against Pena Nieto
are not new. In 2016, Breitbart News reported on an investigation by Mexican journalists which revealed how Juarez Cartel
operators funneled money into the 2012 presidential campaign. The investigation
was carried out by Mexican award-winning journalist Carmen Aristegui and her team. The subsequent scandal became known as “Monexgate”
for the cash cards that were given out during Peña Nieto’s campaign. The
allegations against Pena Nieto went largely unreported by U.S. news outlets.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an
award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel
Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can
follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.

Brandon Darby is the managing
director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel
Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him
on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.

Mexico: Where Is Your Shame?

At a demonstration Wednesday in
Mexico City against Arizona's law.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Immigration: Mexico's government
gloated triumphantly after a federal judge's injunction blocked Arizona's
immigration law. But it's no victory for Mexico. In fact, Mexico's leaders
ought to be mortified.

As radical immigration activists
crowed with glee and the Obama administration claimed victory, Mexico's
government joined the applause.

Calling Judge Susan Bolton's
injunction Wednesday "a step in the right direction," Mexican Foreign
Minister Patricia Espinosa declared: "The government of Mexico would like
to express its recognition for the determination demonstrated by the federal
government of the United States and the actions of the civil organizations that
organized lawsuits against the SB 1070 law."

In reality, it ought to be ashamed.
Supposedly framed as an issue of federal power pre-empting state power, it's
hardly Mexico's business. But Mexico made a big show of saying its interest was
in protecting its nationals from the dreadful racism of Arizona that its own citizens,
curiously enough, keep fleeing to.

Espinosa said her government was busy
collecting data on civil rights violations and her department had issued an
all-out travel warning to Mexican nationals about Arizona.

That's where Mexico's hypocrisy is just
too much.

First, Mexico encourages illegal
immigration to the U.S. Oh, it says it doesn't, but it prints comic book guides
for would-be illegal immigrants and provides ID cards for illegals once they
get here. In Arizona alone, Mexico keeps five consulates busy.

That's not out of love for its
own citizens, but because Mexicans send cash back to Mexico that helps finance
the government.

Instead of selling its wasteful state-owned oil company or
getting rid of red tape to create jobs in Mexico, Mexico spends the hard
currency from remittances. It fails to look at why its citizens leave.

According to the Heritage
Foundation-Wall Street Journal 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, Mexico's big
problem is — no shock — government corruption, where it ranks below the world
average.

That's where Mexico's cartels come in.

Mexico's encouragement of illegal
immigration undercuts its valiant war against its smuggling cartels. The
cartels' prowess and firepower have made them the only ones who can smuggle
effectively across the border. U.S. law enforcers say they now control
human-smuggling on our southern border.

Feed them immigrants and they grow
more cash-rich — and right now, immigrant smuggling is about a third of the
cartels' income.

Mass graves and car bombings are signs
of criminal organizations getting bigger, and more powerful. Juarez, which has
lost 5,000 people this year, bleeds because cartels fight over not just who
gets the drug routes, but who gets the illegal-immigrant smuggling routes, too.

Aside from the cartel mayhem in
Mexico, the bodies are piling up in the Arizona desert and U.S. Border Patrol
rescues of abandoned illegals left to die have risen.

It's not the desert's fault,
and it's certainly not Uncle Sam's fault, as activists claim. No, it's the fact
that Mexicans are encouraged to emigrate. Criminal cartels don't fear
abandoning their human cargo in the desert, as long as Mexico does nothing and
blames Uncle Sam.

Hearing Mexico's government now cheer
the Arizona ruling, which will only encourage more illegal immigration, gives
the country's regime a pretty inhuman face.

If Mexico had any decency, it would
do all it could to discourage illegal immigration and keep a respectful silence
about Arizona.

It needs U.S. support for its war on
cartels. Instead of insulting American citizens, Mexico should confront
directly the reasons why its people are so desperate to leave, and do all in
its power to destroy the cartels that are slowly killing the nation. That
includes defunding the murderous gangs by halting illegal immigration.

MONTERREY, Nuevo Leon – A Mexican federal judge has ruled against the
release of a recently captured cartel boss. The man is wanted by U.S.
authorities in connection to a high-profile cartel-execution near Dallas.

In
a court hearing, a federal judge in Monterrey ruled against releasing Luis
Lauro “La Mora or La China” Ramirez Bautista. He ordered that he be held
without bond until further hearings. Officials removed the wanted drug boss to
the Cadereyta state prison. As Breitbart News first reported in an exclusive
article, detectives with the Nuevo Leon’s State Investigations Agency
arrested Ramirez Bautista at a checkpoint after
the wanted drug lord left a bar near the Barrio Antiguo neighborhood in
Monterrey.

Prior to his arrest, Ramirez
Bautista allegedly attempted to run over a law enforcement official at the
checkpoint and then resisted the arrest. During the arrest, authorities seized
a.38o caliber handgun carried by the wanted drug lord.

The
man known as La Mora is a key boss with a criminal organization that once
belonged to the Beltran Leyva Cartel but has since branched off and become
independent and highly dangerous. Under orders from his boss Rodolfo “El Gato”
Villarreal, Ramirez Bautista is believed to have played a role in helping
mastermind the 2013 murder of Gulf Cartel attorney Juan Jesus Guerrero Chapa.
As Breitbart News reported, Guerrero Chapa was gunned
down in the ritzy Dallas suburb of Southlake after a long-term surveillance
operation. The murder was personal in nature since Ramirez Bautista’s boss El
Gato blamed Guerrero Chapa for the murder of his father.

Ramirez Bautista is wanted by U.S.
authorities in the ongoing case against Villarreal and federal authorities had
added him to a most wanted list of fugitive cartel bosses in the Texas border
region.

The ruling by the judge denying bond for Ramirez Bautista comes as a surprise
since in recent months, as Breitbart News has reported, federal judges in Mexico have been releasing an alarming
number of cartel bosses by ruling their arrests as
illegal or alleging some other bureaucratic error. The man known as La Mora had
been arrested in 2017. However, a Mexican federal judge ruled at the time that
the raid that led to his capture was illegal and ordered his release.

Soon
after the most recent arrest, gunmen from El Gato’s criminal organization
murdered 34-year-old Santiago Aaron Urbina Arellano. This man managed Bar
Ambria, where Ramirez Bautista visited prior to his arrest. It is believed that
the gunmen targeted the bar manager suspecting that he may have tipped off law
enforcement.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas
traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to
recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels
silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the
hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf
Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both
English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by
Tony Aranda from Nuevo Leon.